Embers of Sylvandar

The light over ❖ Sylvandar failed by inches, not all at once. For a thousand years the ⚙ Everlasting Dusk had held the wood in its amber hush — but ★ The Fading had come, and the great spirit-trees dimmed like coals beneath ash.

❖ Lord Thorn stood upon the rampart of living wood and watched the ⚙ Shroud Umbral spill across the northern marches: a shadow that was itself the cloak of a deeper shadow. Beside him, ❖ Lirael Moonwhisper kept her silence — there was nothing left to say that the ❖ Aegis Ember could not answer louder.

"We march tonight," he told her. "The whole host of Sylvandar. Before the last light fails."

They lit the ❖ Gloaming Wardenlights at dusk — ten thousand orbs of silver-green fire raised down the length of the column, each one a ward against the touch of the ⚙ Shroud Umbral.

❖ Elowen Sylvaine walked the line with her eyes closed, reading the road ahead. "He waits for us," she murmured. "❖ Malachar Veyl. At the ❖ Obsidian Eclipse, wreathed in ❖ Obsidian Fire." Once he had been ❖ Lord Thorn’s dearest friend; now he was the dark the march was marching toward.

At the rear, ❖ Kael Draven counted his odds and found them poor. But the ❖ Aegis Ember burned at ❖ Lord Thorn’s breast like a captured dawn, and for the first night in an age, the host of ❖ Sylvandar had somewhere to march.

❖ Kael Draven did not wait for the ❖ Gloaming Wardenlights. While ❖ Lord Thorn spoke of dawns and dying light, the exile counted the dark between the trees and chose it. Let the host march for the ❖ Obsidian Eclipse; he would not burn for another man’s ❖ Aegis Ember.

❖ Lord Thorn held the ❖ Aegis Ember to his brow, and the fire showed him the march to come — the ❖ Gloaming Wardenlights strung like stars down the dark road, and at its end the ❖ Obsidian Eclipse waiting in its ❖ Obsidian Fire.